


he came from the mountains

by pettiot



Series: Genetic Imperialism [9]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, Loneliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-15
Updated: 2010-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:14:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23156899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pettiot/pseuds/pettiot
Summary: This is Midgar, three paces by five, near the size of a coffin.
Series: Genetic Imperialism [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1620499
Kudos: 3





	he came from the mountains

  


When Cloud wakes to shower, to dress, to regret not needing to shave, this is not what he thinks when he walks out the door:

This is everything you ever wanted.

Midgar. Only Midgar.

Cloud does not tell himself: you don't live, here, in a room the size of a dog kennel back home, that you share with two others whom you neither like or care about. SOLDIER training and mako induction and labour shifts mean you never have to see their faces, only their remnants: a hair on the pillow, black stubble in the sink, a stink of sweat or aftershave or shit hanging in the still air. When you return here, here, not home, you tumble, again, again, again, each time the same way, into a bed still warm from He-before who had risen mere moments before your arrival; when you depart, you leave the wash-cubicle floor puddled with water into which He-after would put his great size eleven feet, to leave his tracks on the wall at the foot of the bed where he can't, quite, str etch out to sleep.

This is Midgar, near two hundred square hectares above and below.

This is Midgar, the train from your sleep-cell to your designation-cell, the path from your labour-shift to your pizza joint, the newspaper bin where you sneak clippings of Sephiroth, to plaster, a shell, a structure that holds you together; layered on the wall like history unfolding, an archaeological lattice that, if unravelled, reveals methods of shame and surrender to hold such hope together; gum (which works til summer), spit (which works for a night), come (which, shamefully, lasts forever).

This is Midgar, three paces by five, near the size of a coffin.

One day, they give him orders to move to Junon. Shinra guard, they say, and whisper grunt; no one says SOLDIER, or 'you are not good enough to be.'

When Cloud walks out the door, not needing to pack, or say goodbye, he doesn't think of mountains or his mother, not at all.

.

  



End file.
